The President’s State of the Union address last night contained a lesser announcement of the launching of a US-EU free trade agreement:

“And tonight, I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union – because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.”

This idea has been floating for some months, pushed more from the European side than the US. The US and EU are already massive trading partners with mostly low tariffs and few serious trade disputes.  Nonetheless, making a trade marriage of it has hurdles.  The crux of the US-EU deal will be regulatory and ‘behind the border’ issues.  For example, both the US and EU have extensive farm subsidies and have been critical of one another.  Europeans have some regulatory measures that US exporters see as problematic. (Think GMOs.)

The question is—do developing countries have a stake in this?

The answer is—they could.

What if both sides committed to embracing the pro-development trade policies of the other to harmonize and improve the trade opportunities for poor countries?  The US has a handful of “trade preference” programs that offer special access to developing countries, like the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), the African Grown and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and regional programs for the Caribbean and Andean countries.  The Europeans have the “Everything But Arms” initiative that offers free export access to least developed countries.

Each side has some pros, and also some cons.  Very broadly, the European program is broader (more products included) and more generous (zero tariffs) than anything the US offers.  But the US programs,  especially AGOA, offer more favorable “rules of origin,” which help poor countries export more complex products like garments, rather than being stuck exporting low-value commodities and products.

Neither the US, nor the EU provide full “duty-free, quota-free” access for all least developed countries (LDCs), which has been a key goal for development advocates in the long-stalled Doha Round trade negotiations.  In fact, LDCs have not seen any of the promised outcomes from the so-called “development round” of the World Trade Organization.  Their request to extend the soon-to-expire exemption to implement intellectual property rules for LDCs has failed to gain support from the US in particular.

If the US and EU want to demonstrate global leadership and do something very positive for the world, they could start by using the trade agreement negotiations to start a “race to the top” in creating economic opportunities for poor countries.

Imagine this:  in a few months, the heads of most of the biggest and most important countries will get together for a couple of days.  A few leaders from developing countries will tag along.  The media will cover the event in detail because…well, because why not?  And for a few hours, a lot of the world’s power and attention will be focused in a single place.

What if I told you that the agenda for the meeting isn’t set, and that the outcomes of the meeting have not yet been decided?  Do you think you might have some ideas?

This is the G8 summit, a traveling carnival that reappears every year.  Leaders of some of the most powerful countries gather to discuss weighty topics.  Sometimes they make big promises.  Sometimes they don’t.

For anti-poverty campaigners, this combination of factors is absolutely irresistible.  Or it might be better to say that ignoring such an opportunity would be absolutely irresponsible.  If you believe in making a difference, advancing a cause, having an impact, changing policies and the world, you really must try to take advantage of the G8 summit—and it’s supporting processes and negotiations—for your mission.

Despite some significant and measurable achievements, the G8 and campaigners at the summit have come under some criticism in recent years.  The argument is that while it’s an enormous public relations event, it has a declining value as a negotiating venue and achievements are only symbolic.  Some argue that a better target is the G20.  Others argue that these summits are all losing (or have long lost) their significance.

But if the G8 and the G20 didn’t exist, would anti-poverty campaigners have to invent them?  There’s just no bigger and better way to get these global issues onto a world stage and put pressure on critical leaders to make commitments and then follow them up.  Done.

On Wednesday a coalition of UK groups, including Oxfam, launched the “Enough food for everyone IF” campaign.  The goal is to push Prime Minister David Cameron “relentlessly and every which way” to take action on hunger with the G8.  The campaign has a platform that includes promoting more foreign assistance, clamping down on tax dodging by big companies, stopping land-grabs, and increasing transparency.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi38ZtG4NhM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I like this effort.  It’s positive without being pandering.  There are some real asks that aren’t easy, but aren’t completely unreasonable.  It has focus, but there’s enough room for a broad coalition.  (For additional commentary about the campaign, see these posts from Duncan Green of Oxfam UK, David Harewood of Cafod, David McNair of Save the Children UK, Lawrence Haddad of IDS, and Leni Wild of ODI and Sarah Mulley of IPPR.)

What many seem to miss is that if the campaign and this year’s G8 will be a success, the US will have to step up and take a lead.  The issue of food security and agriculture has actually been championed more by the US than other G8 members in the past.  President Obama managed a modest coup by pulling a significant agriculture and food security initiative out of the otherwise embarrassingly disorganized G8 in 2009, hosted by Silvio Berlusconi.

But what can President Obama deliver this time round?  For now, the newly re-inaugurated President is putting together his team.  Senator Kerry at State Department and Jack Lew at Treasury will both have a hand in the G8 discussions, assuming they are confirmed by the Senate.  President Obama’s key staffer on the G8, National Security Council aide Michael Froman, is strongly rumored to be moving into a new job as the US Trade Representative.  So there’s a lot of uncertainty and movement.

Let’s hope President Obama gets his team in place and his game-plan organized, so we can make something big out of this year’s G8.

Judy Beals is the Campaigns Director at Oxfam America.

In the past six weeks, world leaders met not once, not twice, but three times to discuss and deliver global solutions to global challenges. The G8, the G20 and Rio+20 received scant media attention during this election year dominated by domestic issues. And while global summits generally deliver more snooze than sizzle, they continue to matter, bringing together heads of state to discuss and, at least potentially, to bring global attention, resources and commitment to the world’s poorest.

With nearly a billion people hungry (including 18 million people in West Africa facing a massive unfolding food crisis), increasingly erratic weather, and a weak global economy, the need for shared solutions to shared problems could not be greater. But world leaders failed to rise to the challenge.

Oxfam stunt before the G8

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G8 Leaders look lost looking for food security—signs for shortcuts and silver bullets distract them from the path. Photo: Oxfam America.

As host to the G8—or Group of 8—the US was perhaps best positioned to deliver substantial commitments, especially since President Obama had put global food security squarely on the agenda. But meeting in the secluded Camp David, Maryland, the world’s largest industrialized economies passed the buck. Instead, the G8 tried to fill the gap of their broken promises with a private sector initiative that simply cannot tackle the complex challenges of food insecurity. Only the US recommitted itself to an important initiative started three years ago at the G8 Summit in L’Aquila. On the bright side, some commitments were made to replenish the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), a multi-donor plan that invests in developing country agriculture.

The G20—the group of the world’s 20 major economies—arguably delivered even less. Still relatively new, the G20 has been meeting at the head of state level since 2008 to discuss key issues in the global economy and to promote “strong, sustainable and balanced growth.” Despite opportunities this year to address drivers of food crises—including commodity price volatility and increased demand for biofuels—G20 leaders assembled in Los Cabos, Mexico were unable to move beyond internal disagreement over how to fix the Eurozone. The one bright spot was movement plugging the leak on hundreds of millions of dollars that drain out of poor countries into tax havens every year.

Coming 20 years after the first Earth Summit, Rio+20s ambitions were high to tackle ending poverty and achieving prosperity for all while living within the earth’s limits of fresh water, clean air, and fertile land. While the verdict on action by heads of state at Rio is rightly dismal—there too, at least if you looked hard enough, were glimmers of hope. UN General Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Zero Hunger Challenge was a welcome ray of hope. Even business leaders produced at least a few positive initiatives at the Corporate Sustainability Forum and the Business Action for Sustainable Development.

Overall, shockingly inadequate outcomes, given the scale and urgency of the challenges? Yes. But I bring a different view. We know that solutions DO exist—to bring about a small-scale agricultural revolution that can feed the 9 billion people who will inhabit this earth by 2050 without destroying the planet; to bring about a green energy revolution; to bring about a more just and sustainable global economy that benefits all of us.

What we face is something we CAN change: political will. And while there wasn’t anywhere near enough of it at Camp David, Los Cabos, or Rio, the growing insistence of civil society, north and south, especially young people, was undeniable.

Our supporters were there. People signed the G8 petition we delivered to President Obama, urging him to launch an ambitious food security partnership with small-scale farmers. Nearly half a million supporters tuned in for our G8 Twitter Town Hall, #G8chat . Before the G20 summit Oxfam supporters helped spread the word about what was at stake.Throughout the summits, our Twitter followers tweeted and retweeted via #DearG8, #TweetG20, and #Rioplus20 about progress (or lack thereof) that leaders were making on our key issues.

Our supporters became part of something that is gaining steam—a new awakening to citizen power—standing up, speaking loudly and clearly for our future. Social media is part of it, but members of our Oxfamily went further—holding events, signing petitions, making phone calls, speaking directly with elected officials, and insisting that their voices be heard.

And that’s exactly what we need to keep doing—building political will—holding leaders accountable and making sure the glitz of summits is matched by real commitments for poor people. GROWing a movement in the present, for now and for the future, like no other the world has ever seen. You can help us do that—by asking your friends, families and social networks to join our GROW campaign—by continuing to stand up, take action, and make your voices heard.

So here’s to summits attempted and at least partially scaled. We have mountains still to climb. Looking forward to our journey together.

Victoria Marzilli is Oxfam America’s new media specialist.

As the G8 Summit came to a close, we had a bit of a surprise twist in the outcome. There was more movement on food security than we expected and day one of the summit was focused almost solely on that issue, a rarity in recent G8 history. The increased attention was due in part to the stirring outcry from anti-hunger and poverty activists all over the world.

In the weeks before the Summit, Oxfam supporters contributed to the nearly three thousand #DearG8 tweets, keeping the pressure on G8 leaders to help 50 million people lift themselves out of poverty. Our supporters sent thousands of letters to President Obama, to reiterate that message. We also held two media “stunts” during the week of the summit, bringing activists dressed as the G8 leaders to the White House, and then outside the Reagan Building where President Obama unveiled his “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition”.

In his pre-G8 speech at the Chicago Council Symposium, and again in his closing remarks, he mentioned the G8 will set a new goal of helping 50 million men, women, and children lift themselves out of poverty through country-led agriculture plans. Since 500 million small farms in developing countries support nearly 2 billion people, supporting those farmers means that their families can earn an income, get an education, and thrive. The goal is spot-on, but the way to achieve that goal doesn’t add up.  Though fulfilling their L’Aquila pledges (which were $7.3 billion per year through 2012), the G8 failed to renew their commitments. Instead, they’ve invited the private sector to pledge $3 billion over 10 years in a New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. This is a shrinking response to a growing problem and, even if companies deliver, it still represents 96% decrease in investment from previous public funding levels. At a time when more than 18 million people across West Africa are facing a massive food crisis, we need to recognize that the scale of the problem requires a serious investment that matches the plans from people on the ground. After all, aren’t the world’s small-scale farmers who sell their goods in local markets part of the private sector, too?

On the bright side, G8 countries have made additional pledges of $1.2 billion to the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). Read more about GAFSP here: http://www.gafspfund.org/gafsp. We’re happy to see this important mechanism for country ownership get the funding it deserves.

While it’s reassuring that our leaders are making food security a global priority, we must make sure that we hold them accountable to match the scale of the need and listen to what people in developing countries really need.

Though fulfilling their L’Aquila pledges (which were $7.3 billion per year through 2012), the G8 failed to renew their commitments. Photo: Victoria Marzilli/Oxfam.

Porter McConnell is the Oxfam policy lead for the G8 Camp David summit.

This Friday, G8 leaders are making a big announcement on food security. We expect the launching of a new initiative. Past summits haven’t always had development on the agenda, and the US hosts deserve credit for making sure food security is front and center. Now that the G8 is on the trail to food security, how will we know if they get there?

Although we don’t have all the details of the initiative, here are some key mile-markers to measure the G8’s progress on the new food security initiative. If they can meet these mile-markers on their trail, it will indeed be a great day for nearly 1 billion poor and hungry people:

1.       Does it match the scale of the need?

G8 leaders committed to support developing-country plans for agriculture to the tune of $7 billion a year over three years when they met in L’Aquila, Italy, three years ago. Earlier in Maputo, African governments committed to allocating 10% of their budgets to support agriculture, since it’s how three-fourths of Africans make a living. Experts suggest the global need for agriculture funding is between $60 and $75 billion a year. As much as private sector commitments are welcome, they are usually in the millions of dollars, rather than billions.  There’s no substitute for public investment. If the G8 wants to stay on the trail, the new G8 food security initiative needs to scale up the G8’s public sector investments from $7 billion a year to $10 billion to show forward momentum. At a minimum, the modest funding commitments of L’Aquila should not be eroded.

A new G8 food security initiative needs to be consistent with Africa's plans for agriculture. Photo: Alun McDonald/Oxfam

2.       Is it consistent with Africa’s plans for agriculture?

Just as important as the “how much” test is the “how” test. Efforts to tackle food insecurity work best when they are led by the people and the nations who are closest to the problem. That’s why the G8 committed, through the Rome Principles, to channel their funding through country investment plans for agriculture. While a lot of the G8 countries are on track to meet their “how much” goals, they’re not doing so great on this “how”. A recent ActionAid report suggests that donors are, for the most part, still not funding through country plans. Any new initiative has to be consistent with country plans if it’s to succeed. Unfortunately, this week, we expect the G8 leaders to focus on private sector investment—despite the fact that most country plans don’t include much of a funding role for the private sector. African civil society wants to see a continued commitment to L’Aquila and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), not a distraction or a shift in responsibility. A new initiative needs to prove it’s part of Africa’s plans to be headed in the right direction.

3.       Does it hold everybody accountable for delivering on promises?

Every year, the G8 puts out an accountability report intended to hold itself accountable for progress. This year, the US hosts are to be commended for making an effort to include not just what the G8 committed, but what it actually delivered. But next year and especially the year after, the accountability report will be measuring progress against the new food security initiative. How does—or should—the G8 hold the private sector accountable for pledges made? They don’t answer to other G8 leaders, they answer to their shareholders. Their pledges are strictly voluntary. For the new food security initiative to succeed, all pledges must have a clear accountability mechanism, or else the initiative will get stuck at the trail head.

4.       Is it based on evidence, with a clear path to poverty reduction?

Governments are often tempted to turn to well-resourced multi-national companies and investors in a period of constrained public budgets. But this faith in the private sector as a panacea is not always based on evidence. There’s not much evidence that using donor dollars to leverage private sector funds delivers results for poor people. A recent report by the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group pointed out that less than half of its International Finance Corporation (IFC) projects successfully reached the poor. For a new G8 food security initiative to succeed, it needs to have a clearly-marked path to poverty reduction, one that’s based on the evidence, not on blind faith.

On Friday, G8 leaders will announce a new food security initiative at a special event in Washington the day before they head out to Camp David. Stay tuned this week to hear how they’re faring on the trail!

This blog by Mahamadou Issoufou, Executive Director, The Federation of Unions of Farmers Groups, is cross posted from the Huffington Post.

This piece is part of a series of blogs by leading NGOs to call attention to a range of issues that should be raised at the G8 summit at Camp David in rural Maryland from May 18-19.

My country, Niger, has consistently been one of the world’s poorest countries. And in the last decade, we’ve been hit by a series of food crises—in 2005, in 2010, and today—pushing us further and further into poverty.

With only three months of rain every year and virtually no available irrigation, our farmers struggle to grow whatever they can from our parched earth. Increasingly erratic weather patterns are making things much worse, with droughts leading to extreme floods and vice versa.

Crisis after crisis has had a devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Even minor shocks are having an increasingly severe impact on the lives of the poor, as coping mechanisms reach their limits. Many, especially, men, left their families in search of food and work, leaving women to fend for their children alone. Others have sold their possessions and taken on debt, often at very high interest rates, so they can feed their families.

In pastoral areas, even families who anticipated the crisis by selling off their animals in time only benefited from a few additional weeks’ worth of food. But then they were left with no source of further income.

This hunger threatens the survival and development of our youngest children, as well as the health, livelihoods and survival of the adults. It threatens the future of my country.

But we can fight back against this lethal cocktail of climate change and extreme poverty. In fact, we created a plan on how to fight hunger in my country, both in the short term and in the long term, so we can finally pull ourselves out of this cycle of crisis.

Improving access to credit for famers, so farmers can buy seeds, fertilizer and tools to fertilize their crops, will definitely help. Investing in the resilience of farming communities in the face of climate change is crucial. Prioritizing programs that get people working, such as cash for work or food for work programs, will deliver. As will partnering with farmer groups and investing in their capacity to fight for the rights of farmers and involving farmers in the strategies to fight hunger.

We have a plan, but now we need help putting it into action.

Three years ago at the G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, the world’s richest countries made a promise: if poor countries came up with good plans to help poor farmers grow more and earn more, rich countries would help make it happen. Donor countries, including the United States, have helped, but it’s been too little and too late.

As President Obama prepares to host this year’s G8, I hope he remembers the initiative he kicked off at L’Aquila and gets G8 leaders to step it up and deliver. We kept our end of the bargain, but we’re waiting on theirs. If they can muster the courage to prioritize this extremely important issue, they not only can help us in Niger, but they have the chance to lift 50 million people out of hunger and poverty through agriculture. With such an amazing payoff, isn’t it worth a try?

Victoria Marzilli is Oxfam America’s New Media Specialist focusing on social media.

Join us on May 17 for an interactive discussion on Twitter with global hunger expert and author of Enough and The Last Hunger Season, Roger Thurow.

What is a Twitter town hall? The Twitter town hall is meant to be an interactive Q&A session that anyone can participate in from anywhere!  Follow #G8chat to get an expert’s take on global hunger and how we can work towards solving it at this year’s G8 Summit.

How can I participate? Just log in to your Twitter account (or sign up if you haven’t already) and then follow the #G8chat hashtag for all the tweets. This will automatically refresh with new tweets from the chat as they come in. The conversation will begin promptly at 11am EST and will run for one hour. Jump in anytime with a question or comment, in 140 characters or less, but remember to include the #G8chat hashtag so that we can find your question! Roger Thurow @RogerThurow will answer your questions about hunger, poverty, and how we can work towards a solution. The chat will be moderated by @OxfamAmerica. Also joining us will be @ChicagoCouncil, @GlobalAgDev, and members of Oxfam America staff.

About Roger: Roger Thurow is a senior fellow for Global Agriculture and Food Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. For thirty years, he was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. He is, with Scott Kilman, the author of Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, which won the Harry Chapin Why Hunger book award and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award. His new book, The Last Hunger Season: a year in an African Farm Community on The Brink of Change, will be released on May 29, 2012. He is a 2009 recipient of the Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award. He lives near Chicago.

Victoria Marzilli is Oxfam America’s New Media Specialist focusing on social media.

In less than a month, leaders of the top eight economies of the world will gather in the secluded Camp David locale for the 38th annual G8 Summit—a forum for discussion on today’s most pressing issues. This year, top priorities include food security and agriculture—and for a few good reasons! Hunger is the world’s number one health risk with one in seven people going hungry. Fighting for food security initiatives at the G8 is just one part of Oxfam’s GROW campaign to build a better food system that sustainably feeds a growing population and empowers poor people to earn a living, feed their families, and thrive.

In addition, the deadline is up for commitments made at the 2009 G8 Summit in L’Aquila—and G8 countries need to move forward with a bold food security initiative that helps 50 million people lift themselves out of poverty through agriculture with a $30 billion commitment over three years. While we’re thankful that food security and agriculture are going to be discussed, we need to make sure that leaders deliver more than just empty promises; 50 million lives depend on it.

So starting today, Oxfam is working together with a big group of other NGOs including Save the Children, ONE, InterAction, and many more, to raise the volume on the issue —so loud that G8 leaders can’t ignore it.

Join us in taking the fight against hunger and poverty to Twitter!

A moment like this could be a turning point for the millions of small-scale farmers working hard every day to fight poverty and hunger, but it’s up to us to hold our leaders accountable.

Take action with us to speak up and ask President Obama to lead the G8 to keep their promises. Click the links below to tweet at the @WhiteHouse!

• .@WhiteHouse #DearG8, help 50 million people lift themselves out of poverty at the #G8! http://bit.ly/HKr4td

• .@WhiteHouse, 1 in 7 people will go hungry. Act now: support food security at the #G8! http://bit.ly/HQYKau #DearG8

You can also send a message to President Obama here and follow all of the conversation by searching #DearG8 on Twitter. And don’t stop there. Share the action with friends on Facebook, at work, and at school!

Since 2009, thirty poor countries have risen to the challenge: they have developed plans to improve agriculture and food security in their countries. Now Obama needs to lead the G8 to keep their promise and play their part.

This blog post was written by Porter McConnell, Oxfam America policy and advocacy manager for aid effectiveness.

G8 leaders will meet in Camp David in a month’s time. In 2009 at the L’Aquila summit, they took a bold step forward on food security, committing to resources and a promise to be better partners. Fast forward to 2012, and many of them are cutting their aid to poor countries.

The Obama administration has put food security on the agenda at the Camp David G8. There are proposals circulating for what a Camp David Food Security Initiative should look like. It’s all the rage for donor governments to emphasize the need to entice the private sector to get engaged in promoting growth that fights poverty. One of the models cited often is a public-private partnership in Tanzania called the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania, or SAGCOT.

The private sector has not invested in any significant way in SAGCOT.

In some ways, Tanzania is the perfect “donor darling.” The Tanzanian economy has been growing at 6-8% per year over the past 10-15 years, and budget allocations to agriculture, education, health, roads, and water are on the rise. But at the same time, low growth rates in agriculture, which provides 74% of Tanzania’s jobs, and continuing high population growth, have pushed at least one million more people under the poverty line. Research suggests that investments in agriculture and other productive sectors have failed to benefit small scale agriculture producers or to produce jobs in sufficient numbers, especially in rural areas, so poor people still aren’t feeling Tanzania’s growth.

Yesterday, the German Marshall Fund’s Translatlantic Experts Group released a report on partnerships in food security which digs deeper into the story of the SAGCOT in Tanzania. SAGCOT is intended to be a hub of international partnerships to develop the potential of a formerly marginal region through infrastructure projects like dams and roads, export market zoning, and smallholder access to inputs and agriculture extension through “hub and out grower” relationships with commercial agribusinesses.

While the report is optimistic about SAGCOT, the authors point out some problems with the model. First and probably most damning: the global corporate partners that donors and the Tanzanian government are anxious to recruit have not yet invested in any significant way. SAGCOT’s model is based on private sector investment coming through, in addition to the public resources committed. The lack of investors calls into question the effectiveness of the public money that has been contributed to the partnership. The report also outlines more troubling concerns that agribusiness will dominate at the expense of the region’s small scale agriculture producers, the partnership will encourage land grabbing by investors, and SAGCOT’s governing body leaves little room for small scale producers to participate or influence the partnership’s direction.

These findings mirror Oxfam research in Tanzania in 2011, which also investigated the promise of SAGCOT for poverty reduction through agriculture and found similarly that smallholders seemed to be missing out in the focus on large commercial farms, and the partnership posed a significant risk of land grabs and environmental abuse irrigation, drainage, salination of land, and loss of wildlife habitat and poaching. It was unclear whose role it was to conduct oversight over SAGCOT.

While generally supportive of the partnerships with the private sector, the GMF report acknowledges that donor-private sector partnerships are of limited use for meeting the needs of small scale agricultural producers. And since smallholder farmers, especially women, make up the majority of the world’s poor, it’s tough to argue that these partnerships will be the ticket out of poverty for most.

The private sector can play a supportive role on food security if it invests in ways that strengthen sustainable small-scale production. But there needs to be a high bar: using scarce public resources for private finance may be worth the risk only if it has clear poverty reduction purposes and proven benefits to the neediest. Unfortunately, donors have been taking steps to create an “enabling environment” for private sector investment in agriculture for decades, and there are still a billion hungry people in the world. A recent report by the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group pointed out that less than half of IFC’s projects successfully reached the poor. If the private sector is to play a productive role, there needs to be better evidence that these kinds of partnerships can actually deliver for the poor.

All of this begs the question: is Tanzania’s SAGCOT the model for a new G8 food security initiative, or is it more like a cautionary tale?

Lissette Miller is Oxfam America’s G8 Campaign Coordinator, providing logistical coordination and global team support for the Oxfam team heading to this year’s G8 Summit.

You know things are bad when Russia Today breaks a story about civil liberties in the US. On March 8, President Obama signed into law H.R. 347—the harmless-sounding “Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011”—essentially making it a crime to peacefully protest in areas protected by the Secret Service, whether or not you even know they are there.

Protest is vital to global summits like the G8. Craig Owen/Oxfam International.

The bill, passed unanimously in the Senate and with only three dissenting votes in the House, is a rewrite of an existing law that makes it a federal offense to “willfully and knowingly” enter a building or grounds closed off by Secret Service (who, given their name, don’t usually go out of their way to make their presence known. They’re cool like that). 



The word “willfully” has been omitted from the updated law, making it a crime even if you didn’t know it was illegal to be there (“Willfully” implies intent. You may “knowingly” enter a restricted area, but you may not necessarily have intended to break the law). The bill also makes it unlawful to engage in “disruptive or disorderly conduct” within proximity of said restricted area, and extends to include anyone protected by the Secret Service (goodbye, glitter bombs!). Trespassers can be fined or imprisoned up to ten years, or both.

The troubling thing here is the vagueness of the bill’s language, which lends itself to be easily misconstrued and could give law enforcement more of an incentive to arrest protestors who challenge authority.

Hard to believe this was signed by the same President Obama who, in his 2010 speech to the UN General Assembly, said, “The arc of human progress has been shaped by individuals with the freedom to assemble; by organizations outside of government that insisted upon democratic change.” I guess human progress is now also shaped by restricted areas where individuals don’t have the right to protest.



Just days after signing the bill, the President, together with UK Prime Minister David Cameron, released a Joint Factsheet on US-UK Partnership for Global Development, which, among other things, references the Open Government Partnership—an “innovative partnership between governments and civil society” that commits governments to “new levels of transparency and accountability.” Maybe open governments are strictly an export business?

With last week’s news that the upcoming G8 Summit in May will now take place at the already heavily-restricted Camp David, one wonders how many more safeguards this administration needs against civil society engagement. Meanwhile, at the Russian G8 back in 2006, there was a whole “Civil G8” organized by the Russian government for non-governmental organizations to bring their concerns to world leaders. Compared to the US, the Kremlin, (despite their well-earned reputation for cracking down on opponents) is starting to look more like those fuzzy kitties on YouTube. I can haz democracy?